The large company that drills a well often sells it to a midsize company that operates it for a while, then finally to someone who can “eke out the last few molecules,” said Environmental Defense Fund attorney Adam Peltz. “Really these end sales are about escaping the plugging liability.”
A tide of failing energy companies has government regulators racing to address the nation’s stockpile of abandoned, methane-leaking oil wells as environmental liabilities come to a head in oil and gas bankruptcy proceedings.
More than 260 domestic oil producers
filed Chapter 11 over a six-year period marked by depressed commodity prices and the global economic shock caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill
passed by the Senate last month would
allocate more than $4 billion for plugging and remediating abandoned oil wells.
Who does the government pay for plugging and remediating abandoned oil wells??? They pay our tax money to the big oil companies who caused the disaster!